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Alien Atmosphere Hubbled
b-side.org writes "Yahoo! News has a story on yon giant hubble mirrorscope thingy locating an alien, mostly sodium, atmosphere. X10.com popunder ads also included free of charge." Mm....let's mix that atmosphere with water. T cuts in: This turns out to be the major discovery hinted at a few days ago.
Mmm... Sodium. Anyone else feel like getting some Ramen all of the sudden?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Obviously, it's still highly contraversial. However, now that it seems very likely that there are thousands, millions and billions of planets out there everywhere... we must assume many earth like planets as well, IMHO.
Anyone care to submit their suggestions as to the number of (potentially) intelligent civilizations lurking around?
Mmmmmmm. Floor pie!
Could you possibly have chosen a more incoherent and factually incorrect submission for posting? The atmosphere is not mostly sodium as "b-side.org" seemingly just guessed. The reason sodium was measured is because it is relatively easy to detect. NASA has a more informative story.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
We are probably surrounded by many planets with an atmosphere. If a solar system is capable of having a Jupiter type planet, what about an Earth type planet? It isn't THAT far of a stretch.
As Carl Sagan says (or was it just Contact?) "If it is just us, it seems like an awful waste of space."
div
Guess we could not colonize this planet since our people would be dead from Heart attacks and Hypertention in about 2 weeks ;-)
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
from the Guardian
KWA: Karma Whore's Anonymous
- crayz
T cuts in: This turns out to be the major discovery hinted at a few days ago.
would that be the plantery atmosphere or the X10 ads?
"When the color of the light was analyzed by STIS, the telltale "fingerprint" of sodium was detected."
I'm no chemistry or space exploration expert, so can someone please answer this for me: Do they mean Na+ or actual elemental sodium? I wouldn't expet to find water or anything that would sustain carbon-based life on a planet whose atmosphere had significant amounts of elemental sodium.
Sir Humphrey Davy,
Abominated gravy,
He lived in the odium,
Of having discovered Sodium
-- Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Wired also has a story on this article here.
Shh.
OK, if they are viewing the star's light through the atmosphere, and using the differrence to detect the composition of the atmosphere, then it's absorption. And anything that would "block" wavelengths, means the absorption would increase, and provide a reading showing that it would have more sodium, not less. Am I wrong? Maybe I am wrong, but the more I think about it, the more I feel the statement above just doesn't add up. Seems this reporter may be the typical reporter reporting on a subject she may not actually comprehend - and she's the one that's supposed to be informing us!
That makes them far too hot for life as we know it. Not only would any hypothetical human traveler to this planet die but the planet's intense heat would quickly melt any coins in the person's pockets, the scientists said. Yeah, that's what I worry about when I'm somewhere where (1) I can't breathe and (2) has winds that can rip me to shreds in seconds and (3) has no solid surface for 100's of miles beneath me... Gaah! My quarters!
I can't find my car keys. (no a's in email)
It's depressing to think that we can see so far, and will be seeing even further soon enough, while travel is still such an impossible thought. I'm no expert, but I'm sure someone here can tell you that it'd take a group of human explorers 50 generations on a spaceship to reach some of the places we can see. Point being, is the future a place where all sorts of alien worlds (including ours) will be staring at eachother through a telescope with no way of meeting?
Maybe that's for the best though, cause it'd give us a chance to maybe get to know eachother and avoid the possible interplanetary war that might result if we were to just plop down onto someone else's homeworld. Why am I speculating about this as if it were even remotely possible yet? Good question, me. I think I should stop typing now.
Venus dingbat. S o d i u m D i o x i d e. It was first detected by scientists way back when by watching it pass in front of the Sun and watching what light got absorbed. The Sun even has detectable amounts of sodium in itself.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Yes, and IBM made PCs years ago. Now, they're faster/run different operating systems/come in translucent cases. Big deal.
Then again, I never *have* understood the point of posting a message that basically says "your site sucks". If you don't like it, please leave. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
How amusing. I submitted this earlier and got it rejected. oh well.
This link I was using has a nice story attached. Also for more general info about extra solar planets try Jean Schneider's here or its mirror here.
I'm getting funky time outs all over the place, so its hard to tell whether or not things are up. Unless you guys have gotten so good at slashdotting a site that you do it BEFORE a site has been posted. ;)
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
Did anyone see the great BBC documentary on exploring/colonizing Mars that was shown over the weekend? Not only was it great to see some nerd candy on TV, but they raised a couple of good points that I think may be relevant to the current discussion.
The BBC program said that when we finally do colonize mars, we'll probably bring a couple of species with us - mainly some *very* strong strains of plants (wheat i think) that can thrive in the martian soil (when enclosed in a greenhouse of course). And bees - yep, bees, because they're tough, easy to keep, make honey, and can pollinate plants. (I thought it was interesting that they had already scoured the earth for some organisms that they thought could do well there.)
And also, the documentary said that the answer to the question of whether there is life on Mars may not be known for a long long time because on this planet, life hides in corners of the Earth that you'd never expect, like the antarctic, or inside a bubbling geyser. You'd basically have to dissect all of Mars to be sure it's lifeless.
So after watching the documentary and then reading this article, I think it's clear that despite this planet's radically different atmosphere, not only *could* life exist there, but that some species from our world and their world may be more transplantable than you'd think.
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That's the first message we've transmitted to them?! Now we look like a bunch of cheap, evil, manipulative bas... err.. yeah. Nice discovery.
Do you like German cars?
That depends on what is absorbing. If the high-altitude clouds are similar to those on our sky, they cause absorption through scattering. This would mean the absorption is broad-band.
The astronomers are probably comparing spectra taken during the planetary transit and before/after that to derive the planetary spectrum. High-altitude clouds would reduce the planetary spectrum, including any lines.
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1) The sodium bit: It's not that the planet's atmosphere is mostly sodium, it's just that sodium is rather easy to detect as compared to other elements (we use it to identify stars all the time). Also, given the spectral coverage of STIS (the spectrograph used to make the measurement), Na was probably the only strong line they could go for in one setting.
2) Why this is a big deal: Yes, we know there are gas giants elsewhere, but that's not the point. It's more of a proof of concept that we can measure the properties of an atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system. Plop a more sensitive instrument up there and you can go for smaller planets....and hopefully find signatures of methane and oxygen...boo-yah.
3) The unexpected bit (from the astronomers point of view) Hubble found it. Hubble's great and all, but spectra is not it's bread and butter. Most of us in the astro community were betting on Keck to find this first since a 10 meter on the ground with larger spectral coverage kicks the crap out of a 2.5 meter (Hubble)
-------- The thought plickens....
Call me crazy, but I think the point could have been made with a better example. Simply saying 'pocket change would instantly melt' or something similiar would have made much more sense. As it is, it sounds like the first explorers to land on the planet are supposed to be people that look like they were just pulled off the street. Seriously, who's going to land on a new planet wearing something that even HAS pockets, and even carrying change in those pockets.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The point is that this is a stepping stone. This particular planet and this particular atmosphere are totally irrelevent to anythign and everythign. What is importent is the developement of the TECHNOLOGY behind this discovery. The fact that we were ABLE to ditect it means we are going forward and may someday soon have a way to detect earth-like planets. Or other nifty stuff.
"Nobody writes jokes in base 13." - Douglas Adams
For those of you who, like me, could only vaguely remember that Mozilla introduced some nifty popup-nuking setting but couldn't remember how to turn it on, here it is:
[From the Release Notes for Mozilla 0.9.4]
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
Nice to see that "Hubbled" is a verb now. We need more verbs.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
The Earth's got a bunch of sodium too but what used to be in the atmosphere ended up in rocks and the ocean for the most part. The outer gas giants have quite a bit of sodium in various forms (oxides, chlorides, and hydroxides) though percentage wise not having more than the Sun. Rich sodium lines in the atmosphere could mean massive nimbus like clouds full of sodium dioxide rain or some such. Looking at atmospheric components of the planet will lead to a much better understanding of that solar system's dynamics and maybe a bit of its history. If we can get a better idea of the chemical components of extra solar planets we can start looking for trends and maybe figure out where the best place to look for new planets and for that matter where to find terrestrial planets. It may also lead to a reassertion of our solar system. If every other solar system has more of some element in it than ours we might say "how odd" but then realize it is our solar system that is odd and maybe why we're living in it currently.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Sites in Europe or USA, both have a French language version. They have a 26page PDF detailing it.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --- Albert Einstein
Pluto has an atmosphere. Part of the justification for the Pluto-Kuiper Express is that Pluto's atmosphere is frozen solid through most of its orbit. Right now, it's still gaseous, though.
http://encyclozine.com/Space/Planets/Pluto/
-l
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Not because they aren't there, but because they are very hard to detect with current technology (doppler shifts, light curves). The easy planets to find are very large (big doppler shifts) and fast- orbits of months or less.
Oh, wait, the original poster didn't mention "salt", did he?
So who is confused?
The cake is a pie
*Why are we just looking around? We have the technology! Let's at least go to Mars. Consider that eventually Earth will die. Sooner or later we must be prepared to go somewhere else. I think we should start now.*
Firsters: The earth will die in a billion years or so.. dont start picking out gravesites yet. We have a far far better chance of being killed off by ourselves, or by the Earth, the great macro-organism that it is finally rearing up and removing us as the parasites we are, than lasting until the sun does its "puff up! puff up! THEY HATE THAT!" move.
2) Umm.. mars.. yeah.. we managed to drop a probe through an ice shelf (maybe) and lose it. You really wanna be on the first lander down? Can you think of anyone who *does* want to be on the first lander down?
3) The solution may lie more in science fiction than science fact. Generation ships, ringworlds, or wheels.. that will probably happen long before "terra" forming and habitation of other planets.
(This is assuming the Aliens dont show up with "boobs, beers, or buns, no-one rides for free" stickers on their ships and invite us out for a quick joyride.)
Realistically tho: We have a *hell* of a lot more research and development and scientific knowhow to work through before we are ready to ship people to Mars. Even the fact that we routinely put stuff in orbit is less due to the scientific ability than to the fact that things seem to *not* go cataclysmically wrong very often.
(Not dishign on Nasa.. they are at the very top of my "respected" list.. but its a pure miracle we even got our guys off the moon in the first place!)
maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Again, this is why food labels speak of "sodium" and not "salt" or "MSG".
So your little "you are ignorant" response to the original poster's joke was mistaken. He never mentioned "salt" so there was no confusion of "salt" with sodium.
The cake is a pie
I'll never forget 10th grade chemistry class when the teacher put the Na (metal) in the H2O beaker...not sure if it was his first time or not but the reaction was intense.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello